In the Media

Sherwin Greenblatt '62, SM '64 reflects on his two-decade tenure as director of MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), a program that provides support for entrepreneurs in the MIT community, reports Jon Chesto for The Boston Globe.  “VMS differs from many mentoring programs in that entrepreneurs are connected to not just one mentor, but several subject matter experts, depending on their needs,” explains Chesto. “These are also considered long-term commitments, not just several months of counsel and brainstorming.” 

Prof. Emeritus Paul Osterman speaks with The Boston Globe reporter Scotty Nickerson about increased employment opportunities in nursing homes and residential care facilities. “Baby boomers and retirements are going to increase demand, and a lot of folks are going to need longer-term health care,” says Osterman.

Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, speaks with WBUR’s Here & Now host Indira Lakshmanan about his work developing a longevity index. “In our studies at the AgeLab, believe it or not, 70 percent of us believe that our significant other, or adult children are going to take care of us, [but] only 30 percent of us had the conversation.” 

Lila Sciences, a startup co-founded by Prof. Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli, is developing new platforms aimed at enabling AI-driven laboratories to accelerate materials discovery for energy, sustainability, and computing, writes David Rotman for Technology Review. “If they succeed, these companies could shorten the discovery process from decades to a few years or less,” Rotman notes. 

Reporting for FOX News, Kurt Knuttson highlights how MIT researchers have developed a new light-based scanner that can read blood sugar without a single prick. “A handheld or watch-sized glucose scanner would mark a major shift in diabetes care,” writes Knuttson. “MIT's work brings that future closer with a design that reads your chemistry through light.”

While studying a 2,000-year-old construction site in Pompeii, MIT researchers uncovered new insights into the Roman building process, including the key ingredients needed to develop long-standing durable Roman concrete, reports Luis Prada for Vice. “Ancient Roman builders were ‘hot-mixing,’ which means that they dumped volcanic ash and powdered quicklime together dry, then added water later, triggering a chemical reaction that cooked the mixture from the inside,” writes Prada. 

A new paper by Prof. Admir Masic and his colleagues details their new findings on the specific ingredients used by ancient Romans to develop durable concrete, reports Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine. “Looking ahead, the findings could help improve modern construction techniques, informing the development of next-generation durable, low-carbon concrete,” writes Kuta. 

Prof. Daron Acemoglu spoke at the City University Graduate Center’s panel discussion about the development of AI in the workforce. Acemoglu says “[AI could take] very different directions, and which direction we choose is going to have great consequences in terms of its labor market impact.” 

Washington Post columnist George F. Will reflects on MIT and his view of “the damage that can be done to America’s meritocracy by policies motivated by hostility toward institutions vital to it.” Will notes that MIT has an "astonishing economic multiplier effect: MIT graduates have founded companies that have generated almost $1.9 trillion in annual revenue (a sum almost equal to Russia’s GDP) and 4.6 million jobs."

Researchers at MIT studying amblyopia – commonly known as lazy eye – have found that anesthetizing the retina could restore visual responses, reports Emma Frederickson for Popular Mechanics. “Their recent findings could reshape the way we think about vision loss,” writes Frederickson. 

MassLive reporter Scott Kirsner spotlights Claire Beskin MBA '22, CEO and founder of Empallo, a virtual clinic for heart care aimed at preventing cardiac issues before they happen. “It handles everything from scheduling to prescriptions to billing,” writes Kirsner. “Empallo’s approach, Beskin said, is ‘virtual first,’ meaning it tries to give patients an online consult with a doctor when possible, and send them into the office when necessary.” 

A study by MIT researchers examining the carbon emissions of self-driving cars found that “the power required to run one billion driverless vehicles driving for one hour per day could consume as much energy as all existing data centers in the world,” reports Claire Brown for The New York Times. Graduate student Soumya Sudhakar explains that another big unknown is how autonomous vehicles could change the way people travel, adding to the uncertainty over the overall long-term emissions outlook for self-driving cars. 

Two new research papers by scientists from MIT and other institutions find that AI chatbots are successful at shifting the political beliefs of voters, and that the “most persuasive chatbots are those that share lots of facts, although the most information-dense bots also dole out the most inaccurate claims,” reports Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine. “If you need a million facts, you eventually are going to run out of good ones and so, to fill your fact quota, you’re going to have to put in some not-so-good ones,” says Visiting Prof. David Rand. 

Prof. James Collins speaks with Financial Times reporter Patrick Temple-West about his work using AI to design new antibiotic compounds to combat drug-resistant bacteria. “At present, the [AI] models are doing quite well at designing compounds that can attack in a Petri dish,” says Collins. 

Prof. Desirée Plata, director of MIT’s Methane Network, spoke with Boston Globe reporter Kate Selig about how regional supermarkets are addressing their methane footprints. Plata notes that “grocers could make an impact through improving their waste management practices. And beyond operational changes, she said supermarkets can help shape the public’s understanding of climate issues,” Selig writes. “Most people go to the grocery store,” says Plata. “They have this great opportunity to educate people.”